Covid in Wales: BMA says vaccine booster key to avoiding lockdowns

A senior doctor hopes Wales' vaccination programme means there will not be a return to lockdowns.

British Medical Association chairman in Wales Dr David Bailey said there had already been a "significant uptake" of people having the jab.

Earlier this month, First Minister Mark Drakeford said he wanted to offer a Covid booster to all adults by the end of the year.

Public Health Wales (PHW) said uptake was low for people aged 20 to 29.

Speaking to BBC Radio Wales Breakfast, PHW's Dr Giri Shankar said: "We've got a good uptake currently, about 87% for care home residents.

"We still have a way to go in the younger cohort. In the 40 to 49-year-olds we have about 50% uptake.

"In the 30 to 39 year olds we have 30% uptake and with our healthcare workers we have around 82% so we need to do better with those younger cohorts and healthcare workers so that additional protection can be realised in the population."

Public Health Wales said there had been 12,378 new cases and three further deaths with Covid in Wales over a 48-hour period from 09:00 GMT on 24 December.

This brings the total number of Covid cases to 594,753 and the total number of deaths reported by PHW to 6,551.

More than one-and-a-half million people have now had a booster in Wales.

Dr Bailey said: "We put a big push in [for people to get their booster jabs] a couple of weeks before Christmas, so you'd expect to see the impact of that hitting the Welsh population in terms of reduced Omicron transmission in the very early part of the new year."

With nearly 2.5 million people in Wales having had at least one jab, Dr Bailey hopes there will not be a return to the levels of restrictions introduced over the past two years.

On 26 December, new rules came into place - these included limits on social gatherings and the return of two-metre social distancing.

Groups of more than six people can no longer meet in pubs, cinemas and restaurants in Wales, with outdoor events limited to 50, and 30 indoors.

Dr Bailey added: "I hope that with the protection from the three vaccines that many people had - certainly in the early part of next year - we won't be needing to do the same sort of precautionary things that we're doing at the moment in terms of lockdowns, in terms of social distancing, masks all that sort of thing."

Earlier this week, a government panel of experts in Israel recommended a fourth dose of a Covid vaccine for all over-60s and healthcare workers.

Dr Bailey said it is "entirely possible" jabs will be needed in Wales later next year.

"We've seen the experience of flu jabs over the last 20, 30, 40 years that we've had to do a booster every year for a relatively much lower risk, of course," he said.

"But [Covid] mutates all the time as all viruses do, so I think it's quite likely we'll be doing boosters next autumn."